The next time you click on a link from TikTok, Instagram either Facebook You will be letting them know more details about you than you think. And it is that the three platforms track your activity even when you leave their application without asking your permission, gaining access to data sensitive information such as your address, credit card number or passwords.
This is how one uncovered independent investigation from the developer Felix Krausformer employee of Google and Twitter specialist in privacyin which it is detailed that those social networksused by billions of people around the world, embed code into the web pages users visit to continue to collect data from their behaviour. All without the consent of users or browsers, such as Safari, Firefox or Chrome.
When you’re swiping on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok and clicking a link to go to a web page, those apps open an “in-app browser” instead of redirecting you to an external link so they can retain their viewers longer. users within the platform. The three social giants take advantage of this reality to embed a code javascript in those browsers it works as a tracker, allowing them to continue to track and collect user activity.
? New Post: Instagram & Facebook tracks everything you do on any website in their in-app browserhttps://t.co/dj5CMJUwHc pic.twitter.com/LvWXGa34N2
— Felix Krause (@KrauseFx) August 10, 2022
Tracking every interaction
“The Instagram app injects your tracking code into all websites that are displayed, even when clicking on the ads, allowing them to keep an eye on all user interactions, such as every button and link clicked, text selections, screenshots, as well as any form inputs, such as passwords, addresses and credit card numbers,” Krause said.
The advertising business of Facebook and Instagram was severely hit by changes in the privacy of Manzanawhich allowed Mac users, iPhone and iPad decide whether to allow those platforms to continue tracking their activity outside of the app. It is estimated that only Facebook would have stopped entering up to 10,000 million dollars a year as a result of the refusal of many of its users.
After publishing last week the results of his investigation into the social networks of Meta, the parent company that owns Facebook and Instagram, this week Krause Has published that TikTok has the ability to record “every click on any button, link, image, or other component that is displayed.” The social phenomenon of vertical videos is of particular concern in the United States, as it is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, with which they fear that access to personal data of users could end up in the hands of Beijing. Krause has stressed that the possibility that TikTok collects this information does not necessarily mean that “something malicious” is being done with it, since it is impossible to determine its final use, but it does pose a risk to privacy.
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So that users can see what kind of data these platforms have access to, the researcher has launched the tool InAppBrowser.com. The user only has to send or publish that link within the app they want to analyze and click on it from within to be redirected to an “in-app browser”.
Meta and TikTok have responded by nuanced or denying the allegations from the Krause investigation. Meta has explained that the injection of code responds to the preferences of its users on whether or not they allow apps to track them. On the other hand, the company of Chinese origin has assured that “contrary to what the report states, we do not collect keystrokes or text inputs through this code, which is used only for debugging, troubleshooting and performance monitoring.